Tag Archives: sovereignty

Something Very Important About God

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2 Chronicles 16:9 says something very important about God. He is a God who lacks nothing, and therefore gives everything. He is the source of help for all our needs. And because this is the case, because he is the giver and there is nothing we have which has not been received (1 Corinthians 4:7), he gets all the glory (1 Peter 4:10–11).

But we can read this wrongly. So easily in texts such as this one, we can detach God’s action from his actual posture. We know from this text that God gives — that his eyes “run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.” We know that because the text says it. But what expression do we picture on God’s face in this work? What type of attitude do we project upon him in all his supporting and giving?

The Sketch We Bring

Even though we read about him giving, we can imagine harsh things about him, as if he gives with a frown. Or as if he opens his hands reluctantly.

The issue is how we connect these details about what God does along to our big picture understanding of who he is. We all have a big picture understanding, you know. We all bring a sketch of how we perceive God to every passage of Scripture we read. And unless we check that sketch and consistently subject it to the biblical text, it can blur the wonders before our very eyes.

Keep It Sharp

Something that helps keep the big picture sharp is to compare multiple descriptions of God from throughout the Bible. For example, how does the description of God in 2 Chronicles 16:9 fit with the description of God, say, in Psalm 94:19.

When I thought, “My foot slips,” your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of me heart are many, your comforts cheer my soul.

Like the Lord giving strong support, this passage also speaks about God’s action for his people. And the picture here is amazing. When the psalmist was about to slip, the Lord held him up. This is a picture. Imagine walking on ice. Just when you get unsure and your feet start to slide opposite directions, your dad reaches out and grabs you with his hand. He holds you up. All your weight that would have crashed into the frozen floor instantly shifts onto the hand that has securely taken hold of you. He’s got you. Isn’t that great?

The psalmist continues: when his cares are many, he says the Lord is his delight. “Cares are many” means stress and anxiety. When things get out of hand and life feels overwhelming, God is there. He is full of comfort — of consolations — that cheer our souls. God is a God who is there. Who is so involved in our details that he reaches his hand out when we’re about to slip. He’s so on top of our schedules that he has comfort when we feel empty.

Glory Isn’t Shared

This is the one whose eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. He isn’t stingy in his grace. He is abundant in mercy, in love, in doing the highest good to his people through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. And this means all boasting is excluded (1 Corinthians 1:30–31; Ephesians 2:8–9). We are weak. We are desperate. God is mighty. God is all. And we better get this, for he says,

For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another (Isaiah 48:11).

God Is the One Who Gives

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2 Chronicles 16:9,

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.

Far from a motivational line, 2 Chronicles 16:9 is actually a rebuke.

The truth in these words are contrasted with the behavior of King Asa toward the end of his life. Things began to go haywire for him, as we see in 2 Chronicles 16:2. Judah would be at war with Israel. Asa, king of Judah, rather than relying on the Lord for victory, goes out to buy help from Syria. This is not sharp military tactic — it is faithlessness.

Hanani the seer makes sure we get this. He steps up in 2 Chronicles 16:7–8 to speak the definitive word on what’s happened. “You relied on the king of Syria,” he says to Asa, “and did not rely on the Lord your God” (verse 7).

But Asa, Asa! Don’t you know that God supports those who rely on him? Victory comes when you stop looking to other things for the solution and start looking to God. “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

Asa didn’t get this. Will we? Will we learn from this story?

There are at least two points to take with us. First, God supports us. Second, his support is to those whose heart is blameless.

God Supports Us

God supports us and it will never be the other way around. We don’t support God, or help him, or give him anything as though he has any need. Self-sufficiency is what it means to be God. Only he is independant. Only he is satisfied within himself in everlasting joy. This truth is pervasive in the Bible: Job 41:11; Psalm 50:9–12; Acts 17:24–25; Romans 11:35–36; 1 Peter 4:10–11 (See John Piper’s explanation).

To act contrary to this, to act as if we give God something, is actually our attempt to play his role. To act as if we do him favors is our subtle attempt to put ourselves in his place and project upon him creaturely need. It is a false religion, and a popular one at that.

Be overwhelmed today that God is God and you are his. The reason your heart beats is because he speaks it. All that you have is given to you by him. Don’t ignore this wonder. Let us be humbled by it.

The Blameless, That Is

This verse gets more specific. God’s action on behalf of his creatures is peculiar to those whose hearts are blameless toward him. Now what does this mean? Considering the story of Asa and Hanani’s rebuke, we see that the parallel to blamelessness is trusting the Lord.

Here’s the snapshot: Asa didn’t rely on God, therefore God doesn’t support him in battle. Verse 9 gives us the rationale that God supports those whose hearts are blameless toward him. . . which means, to not trust God (like Asa) is to not have a blameless heart. And the converse is true, to trust God means to have a blameless heart.

Asa’s problem was that he didn’t rely on God. He didn’t have faith. He ignored who the Lord is and what he has said. This goes to show that God’s work on our behalf is not generic. It is focused on all his promises made sure in Jesus — promises that we will only taste if we trust in him.

So as we see the supremacy of God in this verse, we are left with the imperative to believe. To trust in the finished work of Jesus for us, to abandon all efforts of our own (Romans 4:5; Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 2:8–9).

The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to support — work for, provide every need for, give victory in every struggle for — those who are his by faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.

God Is Great in All the Earth

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Over the past couple years I’ve had the joy of occasionally leading corporate prayer at Bethlehem’s Sunday night service. I write them out and read them, every time. By grace I mean it when I write it and I mean it when I voice it. Though I’ve archived them all, they’ve not been posted before. But perhaps they might be helpful — one more little means to direct our hearts and minds to the Lord and the wonder of his grace.

The prayers are typically angled by whatever the theme is of that particular service. This most recent theme was the greatness of God in all the earth.

________

Father, we come now and ask for a view of your greatness.

The nations rage and the kingdoms totter, you utter your voice and the earth melts. You have brought desolations to the end of the earth, you make wars to cease, bows to break, spears to shatter, and chariots you burn with fire. You speak and summon the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting, you measured the waters in the hollow of your hand, you make grass to grow in deserts that no man will ever see, you give food for lions and know every time a goat gives birth.

You know every star in the sky, every sparrow that falls on the earth, and every hair upon our heads. Your judgments are unsearchable, your understanding beyond searching out. You are greater than that which can be imagined, counseled by no one and constrained by nothing. Utterly independent and gloriously sovereign, you are great, you are good, and you do what you want.

And we don’t answer back, indeed we can’t. We are dust, our lives are vapors, you know our frame is like grass. You are eternal, your knowledge is incomprehensible, you dwell in inapproachable light. To see you would melt us, for you are holy and we are sinful.

For we have tried to be creatures apart from you. We have abandoned the glory of reflecting your image and have instead sought to forge our own. We have hoisted up for ourselves other gods who are not gods, and thus deserve your everlasting wrath.

But though great, you are not distant. You do not keep silent. You are high and lifted up, and yet you came and lived on this earth. Father, you have sent your Son, Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, who has come to reveal your glory and redeem your people. So that when he died in our place on the cross we see the preeminent display of your character, when he rose from the dead we witness the triumph of your greatest victory, and when we believed the news about this we experienced the power that it all accomplished.

Once separated and dead, now reconciled and alive, brought into fellowship with you, we realize that your sovereign prerogative is always aimed at your glory and our good. Glory and goodness that we will behold and delight in forever.

Thank you. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Either Jesus Changes Everything, or He Changes Nothing

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It’s not always a good idea to listen to lectures on road trips. Especially not if you are already a little sleep deprived.

Traveling with Tony Reinke from Vancouver to Seattle last week, I decided to put on a little John Webster. Ten minutes into the talk, after nodding in an out a couple times, I persuaded myself it was too dangerous. We stopped and got coffee. But it wasn’t before I heard a line I’ve continued to mull over since. In this lecture on Christian discipleship, Webster commented something like, “Jesus either changes everything or he changes nothing.”

Think about that.

Either he’s King over everything or he isn’t. And if he is then everything must change. It must. And so he is and so it must.

This has become a topic of conversation for the whole family as we settle into the summer together. Everything changes. The way we brush our teeth. Drink orange juice. Commute to work. Jesus is risen. He is Lord. So every speck of this earth is, in one way or another, pointing to him.

A couple mornings ago we were having breakfast outside on the deck when I told Elizabeth, four, and Hannah, two, about Jesus changing everything. I explained this is what it means to be the forever King.

“So, Elizabeth,” I said, leveling my eyes and posture with hers, “How does Jesus change the way we eat breakfast outside?” She smiled, a true smile, “We enjoy it.”

I think that’s a good start.

 

Theology in Baseball and Blockbusters

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My colleagues (and friends), Tony Reinke and David Mathis, have authored two posts this week I absolutely love. Now, I think it’s excellent content. But even more than that, it’s what’s under the hood that encourages me most. It’s the way these posts give us a model for seeing the world. Tony is drawing deep truths about God’s wrath from a movie about superheros. David connects John Frame on the Christian life to Major League Baseball’s league-leading homerun hitter.

Check them out: Tony’s The Avenger and David’s Josh Hamilton, Relapse, and the Means of Grace.

On Election and Faithfulness

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Deuteronomy 7:7–9,

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,  but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations

The theology of election leads to the exhortation to know the very character of God. He is sovereign: loving whom he loves, having mercy on whom he wills — and he is not arbitrary. He acts in accordance to a standard, namely, himself. He is a God of covenant faithfulness.

This passage is a remarkable blending together of YHWH’s utter sovereignty and condescending relation to his people. He is sovereign enough to choose whom he wills, according to his own good pleasure, and yet he is guided by his own character such that he never acts outside of who he is. He is sovereign, in that he does whatever he pleases, and he is bound, in that he doesn’t contradict his character.

This is deeply rooted in the essence of the triune God, whose election is in reference to the Son (Ephesians 1:4). And the root of his election — his unconditional, because-he-is-God election — and his mind-boggling, mouth-shutting faithfulness is intrinsic to himself. It is in himself, “for he is content with his own secret good pleasure.”

How to Approach the Bible

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The Bible comes from God; God doesn’t come from the Bible.

Our knowledge of God is a different story. What we know about God, definitively and redemptively, comes from the Bible. And that is, the Bible that comes from God, who himself comes from nothing.

These are the foundational pieces to understanding the doctrine of revelation, and therefore, the doctrine of Scripture. God, utterly independent and essentially revelatory, has made himself known. This is stunning. And it helps to read the Bible with it in view.

D. A. Carson writes,

To approach the Bible correctly it is important to know something of the God who stands behind it. God is both transcendent (i.e., he is “above” space and time) and personal. He is the sovereign and all-powerful Creator to whom the entire universe owes its existence, yet he is the God who graciously condescends to interact with human beings whom he has himself formed in his own image.

Because we are locked in time and space, God meets us here; he is the personal God who interacts with other persons, persons he has made to glorify him and to enjoy him forever. . . .

The point to emphasize is that a genuinely Christian understanding of the Bible presupposes the God of the Bible, a God who makes himself known in a wide diversity of ways so that human beings may know the purpose for which they were made — to know and love and worship God, and so delight in that relationship that God is glorified while they receive the matchless benefit of becoming all that God wants them to be.

“Approaching the Bible,” Collected Writings on Scripture, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 19–21.

Read at DG.

What Seth Godin, John Piper, and Jesus Teach Us About the Mission of the Church

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Seth Godin:

Fitzgerald nailed it when he described Jay Gatsby’s attitude: “What would be the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” It’s easy to fall so in love with the idea of starting that we never actually start. (Poke the Box, 75)

One of Godin’s goals in this little book is to expose the truth about failure — it’s not as bad as we all think.

And yet, the fear of failure is paralyzing. It’s the great deterrent to our starting things, to our taking risks. It is, as Godin explains, the dirt that buries us in the status quo program of the world around us.

Now, in my opinion, the biggest and simplest takeaway from reading Godin is how much more what he says applies to the Christian than to the secular professional.

Godin is brilliant in trying to convince his readers to step forward, to fly in the face of fear, to “start.”

And Jesus says this:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18–20)

Whatever it is caught in the brain storm of your starting, let it have this verb in its sights: make disciples.

Be about sharing the gospel and your very own self with people in order to present them mature in Christ (1 Thessalonians 2:8; Colossians 1:28).

Jesus has given us the commission, with all authority in heaven and earth. And he is always with us, always, with all authority in heaven and earth.

Pastor John writes,

When the threat of death becomes a door to paradise the final barrier to temporal risk is broken. When a Christian says from the heart, “To live is Christ and to die is gain,” he is free to love no matter what. . . . To every timid saint, wavering on the edge of some dangerous gospel venture, Jesus says, “Fear not, you can only be killed” (Luke 12:4). (A Call for Christian Risk)

How can we be afraid?

Go.

[Original post at Desiring God]

“The gates of Hades will prevail against every institution but one…”

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Nice find by Josh Etter in the Piper archives.

Pastor John writes,

The church of Jesus Christ is the most important institution in the world. The assembly of the redeemed, the company of the saints, the children of God are more significant in world history than any other group, organization, or nation. The United States of America compares to the church of Jesus Christ like a speck of dust compares to the sun. The drama of international relations compares to the mission of the church like a kindergarten riddle compares to Hamlet or King Lear. And all pomp of May Day in Red Square and the pageantry of New Year’s in Pasadena fade into a formless grey against the splendor of the bride of Christ.

Take heed how you judge. Things are not what they seem. “All flesh is like grass. And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord (and all his family) abide forever” (1 Peter 1:24–25). The media and all the powers, and authorities, and rulers, and stars that they present are a mirage. “For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). The gates of Hades, the powers of death, will prevail against every institution but one, the church.

Excerpted from The Cosmic Church (1981).

On God’s Utter Independence

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Reading theology proper has a way of exposing our deficiencies in personal holiness.

I’ve been working my way through Scott Oliphint’s God With Us. It’s my favorite kind of book: all about God and thoroughly Christological (perfect for Advent reading). I love the doctrine of God’s aseity. I love how it blows our mental capacities, how we realize that we’re just standing on the seashore, that the ocean of the knowledge of God is only wetting our feet. God is greater than that which we can imagine. And then bigger than what we can’t imagine him to be.

It is so precious to feel his bigness, to be swallowed up by it, to close your eyes and weave together some special effects in your mind of what it looks like to be engulfed by the mystery of his fellowship, to be drawn into his communion, to consider the miracle of how we can know anything true about him.

And being immersed in this vastness affects how we think about personal holiness — namely, we realize the disparity between God and ourselves. We are more enthralled by this God to Whom (and by Whom) we have been reconciled. Little thoughts that may have gone unchecked are now rotten. There is an increasing impatience that the finished work of Jesus be more prevalent in the moments of our day. We want our union with Jesus to make more of a difference.

It’s an Isaiah 6 sort of thing. Not that we’re trying to merit a relationship. A God like that won’t be impressed with our unclean lips. We see him more clearly, we see ourselves in his light, and we’re stunned by the death and resurrection of Jesus all over again.